US top military official says strike against Iran would halt nuclear programme

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US top military official says strike against Iran would halt nuclear programme
America's top military officer has said that a United States strike against Iran would go "a long way" to delaying Tehran's nuclear programme.
 
Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 6:20PM BST 19 Apr 2010

 
 Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at a forum at Columbia University, said that attacking Iran was a "last option" but he made clear that military plans had been drawn up.

"We in the Pentagon, we plan for contingencies all the time and certainly there are options which exist," he said.

 
"The diplomatic, the engagement piece, the sanctions piece, all those things, from my perspective, need to be addressed to possibly have Iran change its mind about where it's headed," he said.

Adml Mullen was speaking the day after Robert Gates, the Pentagon chief, warned President Barack Obama in a secret "wake-up call" memo that the White House has no effective policy for dealing with a nuclear Iran.

In the memo, Mr Gates outlined a scenario – viewed in Washington as increasingly likely – in which Iran would gather all the major parts required for a nuclear weapon but stop just short of actually assembling them to make a fully operational bomb.

This would mean that Iran could remain a signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty [NPT] while becoming what is sometimes referred to as a "virtual" nuclear weapons state.

One senior official described the memo as "a wake-up call" and urged the White House to ponder about how the US could contain Iran if it decided to produce a weapon and how to deal with the possibility that nuclear fuel or weapons could be obtained by a terrorist group supported by Tehran.

Mr Gates issued a statement yesterday in which he said that he had identified "next steps in our defence planning process" that would be reviewed by decision makers.

"There should be no confusion by our allies and adversaries that the United States is properly and energetically focused on this question and prepared to act across a broad range of contingencies in support of our interests."

The West accuses Tehran of seeking to produce atomic arms but Tehran says it wants only to generate electricity.

Yesterday Iran announced that it had approved the sites for new uranium enrichment plants despite the growing pressure to stop nuclear work. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's senior adviser Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi said that the president had "approved the locations of the new nuclear sites" and the "construction at these sites will start with his order."

The five permanent United Nation Security Council members, including Britain, and Germany are accelerating negotiations on a new round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.

An American draft proposal outlines new restrictions on Iranian banking, a full arms embargo, stricter measures against Iranian shipping and restrictions on members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and firms it controls.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, called on the international community to stop Iran from importing gasoline as part of a regime of "crippling sanctions."

"If you stop ... Iran from importing ... petroleum, ... then Iran simply doesn't have refining capacity and this regime comes to a halt. I think that's crippling sanctions", he said.

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